The Science Wars, Argumentation Theory, and Habermas

Cogent Science in Context The Science Wars, Argumentation Theory, and Habermas William Rehg The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2009 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. For information about special quantity discounts, please email [email protected]. This book was set in Baskerville by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong, and was printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rehg, William. Cogent science in context : the science wars, argumentation theory, and Habermas / William Rehg. p. cm.—(Studies in contemporary German social thought) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978-0-262-18271-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Habermas, Jürgen. 2. Science—Philosophy. 3. Debates and debating. 4. Persuasion (Rhetoric). I. Title. B3258.H324R444 2009 121—dc22 2008029433 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 I The Argumentative Turn in Science Studies 1 Science as Argumentative Practice The normative framework I propose in this book links the assessment of expert claims with the notion of cogent scientifi c argumentation. The idea that scientifi c practices depend centrally on social processes of argumentation and not simply on experimentation, is, I believe, rather widely accepted. That argumentation can provide a suffi ciently comprehensive framework in which to understand the sciences is a more ambitious assumption. In this chapter I provide some initial clarifi cation of what I mean by science as a set of “argumentation practices.” I also introduce the conceptual framework I employ in Parts I and II for analyzing scientifi c argumentation. After some preliminary orientation (sec. 1), I describe the “rhetorical turn,” which led to the rhetoric of science, and the emergence of argumentation studies (secs. 2, 3). These developments in the study of rhetoric and argumentation led a number of theorists to propose a multiperspectival framework for the evalu- ation of argumentative practices; this framework, appropriately clarifi ed, can serve as a heuristic for understanding developments in science studies (secs. 4, 5). 1 Scientifi c Inquiry and Argumentative Practices Approaching scientifi c inquiry as an argumentative practice immediately sug- gests a possible objection, which I want to dispel at the outset. The objection goes as follows. Granted, there are occasional scientifi c controversies, and granted, science articles employ specifi c types of rhetoric and can be inter- preted as arguments of one sort or another. But as a general framework, an argument-centered approach seems overly textual and abstract—just one 18 Chapter 1 more variant on the old “science-as-knowledge” approach, which misses the materiality of “science-as-practice” (Pickering 1995; also 1992b). To press the point, one might ask whether arguments and argumentation capture the process of inquiry and “logics of discovery” that lie at the very heart of scientifi c knowledge-production. Must not an approach based on the assessment of scientifi c arguments ultimately reproduce—to be sure, in more complex and sophisticated terms—the old disjunction between context of discovery and logic of justifi cation, and in such a way as to privilege that latter? The short answer to the last question is “no.” For the long answer, one must actually attempt to work out an argumentation-theoretic framework. But the short answer has a number of considerations in its favor already. As we shall see in the next section, the developments that shaped argumentation studies in recent decades are precisely of the sort that undermines a discovery– justifi cation distinction, at least in the logical-empiricist sense. Rejecting formal logic as an adequate theory of argument, many argumentation theorists today strive to situate arguments in their practical contexts. Although they generally understand these contexts as discursive or intellectual, in the natural sciences we must also consider them material contexts: evidential arguments are typically about what one can do with materials in a laboratory, or about what one can observe in the physical world. This does not mean that no distinction remains between scientifi c argumentation and experimentation. What it does mean is that argumentative practices in the sciences are partly material practices. Experimental practices of inquiry thus intertwine with argumentation, even at the very concrete level of contin- gent material “resistances” (Pickering 1995, 51; Galison 1997). The success of scientifi c arguments is measured by their relation to experimental practices and not simply by standards for the logical composition of articles. We can see this at a number of levels of scientifi c practice, beginning with the local research site or laboratory. As the novice scientist soon learns, one of the fi rst challenges is to arrive at stable, reliable experimental methods and results in one’s own laboratory: mastering the material situation, therefore, is partly constitutive of argument construction, for without reproducible results one has no evidence to report as reasons in support of one’s hypothesis. At the very least, one must get one’s instrumentation and observational methods to func- tion properly. To a large extent, the daily work of bench-top science is oriented toward solving specifi c experimental problems, solutions that presuppose one has gained suffi cient mastery of the relevant laboratory techniques to obtain 19 Science as Argumentative Practice results that are both reproducible and trustworthy. Only if one answers such questions of detail—for example, in the area of pollutant testing, questions regarding such mundane details as the best sample size and reagent concentra- tions, possible interferences, optimal instrument settings, and so on—can one acquire the empirical evidence that can adequately support a conclusion. This daily struggle with the physical world in the laboratory or in the fi eld is thus oriented toward the development or construction of an argument—indeed is part and parcel of the constructive process, where “construction” simply refers to putting together the evidence required to support a publishable result. Experimentation ultimately aims beyond the lab, however: experimental practices are heavily oriented toward the production of public knowledge, and to reach that goal fi ndings have to be presented in a convincing manner as publicly acceptable arguments (Ziman 1968). Here public acceptability is not measured by publication alone, but more pertinently by the usability of one’s fi ndings and arguments for the research of other scientists (cf. Hull 1988). The ongoing concern with classifi ed military and corporate research testifi es to the value of this traditional orientation. The orientation of everyday laboratory practices toward the production of arguments is also evident in the development of a research proposal. Although one might consider the proposal itself as a kind of argument, here I am inter- ested in the tacitly projected argument at which the proposal aims. To formu- late a research proposal, the researcher generally must (a) identify a problem or question that is (or can be) of interest to other scientists (and perhaps certain groups of nonscientists) and (b) have an idea about how to go about answering the question or solving the problem (cf. Montgomery 2003, chap. 11). In identifying a question or problem, one commits oneself to arriving at some kind of conclusion; in proposing an approach or method, one commits oneself to some kind of argument that will support the conclusion that addresses the question. The research proposal, in other words, is the fi rst step in a process of con- structing an argument that the researchers hope will have a place in a broader dialectic of inquiry within the subdiscipline or area of research. Thus the dialectic of inquiry that constitutes science as a substantive intellectual process—of research in response to a question, which in turn opens up further questions leading to further research—sets the argumentative context in which the proposal is supposed to make sense. Inquiry is dialectical insofar as it involves an interlocking series of substantive moves—communication of results or 20 Chapter 1 arguments in one venue or another—in which later moves respond to or build on earlier ones. The series can be controversial, involving objections, replies, and rebuttals, but it can also have a more irenic character, involving a series of studies that gradually close in on establishing some result or hypothesis. If we can understand the broader dialectic of scientifi c inquiry or progress as argumentative, and if we can understand inquiry within the laboratory or research team as part of argument construction (even if it is not only that), then there is no reason to split inquiry, the process of discovery, from scientifi c arguments and argumentation. Although an argumentation-theoretic framework provides a context in which to assess the cogency of scientifi c claims—and hence is in that sense a context of justifi cation—the notion of argumentation I employ here takes in, as part of its substance, the discovery process itself. 2 The Rhetorical Turn As I mentioned earlier, the area of research that goes by the name “rhetoric of science” has gone the farthest in applying argumentation theory to the study of science. But the rhetoric of science emerged as part of a broader “rhetorical turn” and the so-called new rhetoric associated with it. These developments were motivated by dissatisfaction with the positivist and logic-centered approaches in the study of inquiry and argument. Among philosophers, this movement was led by attempts to go beyond formal-logical analysis to the analysis of informal and noncompelling arguments (Perelman and Olbrechts- Tyteca 1969 [Paris ed. 1958]; Toulmin 1958; Naess 1966 [Oslo ed.

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